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From the archives: Rough politics in Montreal

Author of the article:

John Kalbfleisch • Special to the Montreal Gazette

Publishing date:

April 15, 2017 • 4 minute read

The dirty tricks employed by Reform candidate Lewis Drummond (left) in order to win a by-election against Tory candidate William Molson, in 1844, resulted in the death of Julien Champeau, who may have been in the wrong place at the wrong time.William Notman (Molson portrait)/ McCord Museum

From the archives: Rough politics in MontrealBack to video

“Detached battles then took place. In the contests for admission, the military were called out in several wards, and universal panic at this unheard-of invasion took place.”

Gazette, Thursday, April 18, 1844

Some things we do know about Julien Champeau. He had a job on the Lachine Canal, though not as a mere deckhand on some scow. While just 28, he was already a “master bargeman.”

Other things are less clear, and none more important than this: Just what was he doing in the middle of Montreal one Wednesday morning in April 1844?

Montreal was the new capital of Canada, and a by-election for the legislative assembly had the city in an uproar. The Reform candidate, Lewis Drummond, was unscrupulous in using every means, fair or foul, that he could think of to win. His Tory opponent, William Molson, was not above responding in kind.

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The vote was set for April 11-12. But a couple of weeks before, Molson was warned that the Irish-born Drummond had started organizing gangs of Irish canal workers to break up his campaign rallies. The canallers were tough men, employed in a major project to deepen the waterway.

When the main poll opened in Place d’Armes on the 11th, the square was already jammed with Molson’s supporters. Drummond’s campaign manager, Francis Hincks, sent for the canal men, and soon a full-scale riot was raging. Stones flew; clubs, pistols “et autres armes meurtrieres” were seen. The vote was put off to the following week.

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Tempers stayed on the boil over the next five days, and when the polls reopened on the 16th, it was more of the same. Drummond’s thugs and Molson’s flew at each other. Voters for Molson had it especially bad. Some were beaten and even had their clothes ripped away.

Soldiers were called out to maintain order, but they were under orders not to use undue force. During an election riot 12 years before, they had opened fire near Place d’Armes and three men had died.

On the second day of the voting, Julien Champeau was among the crowd milling about the poll in what’s now Victoria Square. He had arrived with his friend Guillaume Mallet in Mallet’s wagon. Perhaps Champeau’s barge was tied up and he temporarily had no work; the Irish navvies had sabotaged the canal works a couple of days before.

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They watched as one John Dyer tried to vote. A Molson man, he was attacked and thrown to the ground. His shirt was torn from his back, his trousers pulled down past his knees. Mallet and Champeau leapt from the wagon, apparently to help Dyer, but then got into a fight with his tormentors. Soldiers with their muskets held across their chests pushed them back. Champeau grabbed at two bayonets, and then was stabbed – apparently by accident, yet apparently several times – by a third.

The wounded man made his way to the home of Dr. Wolfred Nelson, a few blocks along St. James St. The chief punctures, in his abdomen and back, seemed shallow enough, though he also had a massive bruise on his lower back. He was patched up, warned to take it easy and sent on his way.

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Within a day, however, Champeau’s condition deteriorated rapidly. Nelson was called to his bedside several times, and found him in agony, his knees drawn tight to his chest. Early in the morning of April 21 he died.

The autopsy was conducted by Nelson and two other prominent doctors, Andrew Holmes and Pierre Beaubien. They judged that the injuries should not have been fatal, but also found signs of previous disease in his lungs and spleen. The coroner’s jury concluded that this combination of old disease and new trauma was to blame.

This failed to satisfy The Gazette. Champeau’s death “was one of those unhappy accidents which arise out of a lamentable necessity” – that is, the soldiers’ attempt at riot control. The real blame lay with “those who provoked the riot.”

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In any event, the canal men got what they wanted. Drummond had 1,385 votes, against just 468 for Molson.

In the general election that followed that fall, the reformers of Louis-Hippolyte LaFontaine won handily. But not handily enough for Lewis Drummond: The canallers who had first seen him into office sold their support this time to the Tories. Both Drummond and his fellow Reformer, Pierre Beaubien, were defeated in Montreal.

The very month of Champeau’s death, the Montreal Medical Gazette was born. It was a lively publication, made the livelier by a running debate in its pages between Nelson and Holmes over whether Champeau had acute peritonitis or not when he died. The journal folded a year later, without the issue being settled.

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